The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920-1929

Christopher Robert Reed

Publication Year: 2011

In this book, Christopher Robert Reed describes the rise of Chicago's "black metropolis" of the 1920s, bringing to life the fleeting vibrancy of this dynamic period of racial consciousness and solidarity. Reed shows how African Americans rapidly transformed Chicago and achieved political and economic recognition by building on the massive population growth after the Great Migration from the South, the entry of a significant working class into the city's industrial work force, and the proliferation of black churches. Mapping out the labor issues and the struggle for control of black politics and black business, Reed offers an unromanticized view of the entrepreneurial efforts of black migrants, reassessing previous accounts such as St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton's 1945 study Black Metropolis. The exquisitely researched volume draws on fictional and nonfictional accounts of the era, black community guides, mainstream and community newspapers, contemporary scholars and activists, and personal interviews.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

At the end of the twentieth century, I began the daunting task of constructing
a one-hundred year history of African America settlement that began during the
nineteenth century, along with an exploration of this population’s contributions
to the growth and development of Chicago. Along this tortuous path, I was aided
by many persons...

Introduction

For over a half century, perhaps the best scholarly work exploring African American
life in large, industrialized, northern cities with expanding populations has
been St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton’s Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro
Life in a Northern City (1945). This tome’s value to scholarship over the years extended...

1. Demography and Ethos

The Jazz Age was a national period filled with anxieties resulting from the unsettling
pursuit of world peace, labor and racial unrest, anticipated economic
recession, and a besieged value system. Within the South Side black community,
a new sentiment prevailed so it was also the age of the “New Negro.” Prohibition
challenged...

2. "The Whirl of Life": The Social Structure

The whirl of life that E. Franklin Frazier observed contemporarily might have
been the synergy generated by the various social classes in their collective pursuit
of racial progress and the enjoyment of living, the latter quality well noted in a
group that learned to laugh and smile despite adversities. For the first time in the
history...

Image Plates

3. The Golden Decade of Black Business

The complementary wing to politics within the Chicago political economy—
the business sector—claimed as its leadership the triumvirate of black Chicago
commercial enterprise: Robert S. Abbott, Jesse Binga, and Anthony Overton.
These men dominated the business activities of the Black Metropolis with their
control...

4. Labor: Both Fat and Lean Years

Whatever halcyon days were seen in the business sphere failed to materialize into
a comparable experience for the bulk of the black laboring class during the 1920s.
Although the war years had brought something positive into the lives of old and
new black Chicago residents, the end of war brought a series of negative experiences
and...

5. The Struggle for Control over Black Politics and Protest

Maintaining the stability of the Black Metropolis within the dynamics of the city’s
political economy meant more than promoting growth and development in the
business arena and expanding employment and housing opportunities. Politics was
to be utilized to meet communal needs in employment and housing, offering the
most...

6. Transformed Religion and a Proliferation of Churches

Granted that political and economic forces and influences greatly affected the
whirl of life in the Black Metropolis, they did not preclude the dynamic power
of religion from exerting its sway. African American religious belief and practices
were indeed unfettered in their scope. The case was so much so that...

7. Cultural and Aesthetic Expressions

The whirl of life in black Chicago appeared dramatically in many cultural and
aesthetic expressions. In its ability to overwhelm most other aspects of life, along
with the heightened sentiment during the decade toward materialism and consumption,
this composite spirit of creativity, rebelliousness, and celebration submerged
reform...

Conclusion and Legacy

Perhaps there is a certain amount of irony in the fact that the declarative pronouncement
on the meanings and achievements of this single decade of historical
significance emanated from the perceptive mind of Joseph D. Bibb. The
Alabama native, who attended and graduated from Yale University before beginning...

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